Testing a TV streaming service’s platform to inform product strategy and user experience
Leading TV Streaming Service
Role: Lead UX Researcher | Under NDA
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Challenge
An online streaming service approached us because they were developing an upgraded version of an add-on subscription to their membership model and wanted to know any unmet needs and pains while users subscribed to their platform and purchased the current add-on subscription across multiple devices. This included investigating users’ understanding of the current packaged offers and the add-on and if they could make an informed decision during onboarding which would help improve the experience for users and increase conversion of the add-on subscription.
The client’s stakeholders are typically siloed and any user research is often conducted in isolation from other stakeholders and insights aren’t shared. This has created an inconsistent experience when onboarding different devices.
Approach
The client and I decided to conduct interviews and usability tests in a lab, testing the live journeys across 4 devices with 15 participants. We decided to test the live journeys instead of prototypes to avoid users being limited to exploring the happy paths of a prototype during testing which would have unreliable findings.
Before testing, the client and I decided to conduct a short remote stakeholder workshop to identify their questions, assumptions and known issues which they annotated on a Miro board for each stage of the onboarding journey. This allowed me to align the discussion guide with the needs of the client.
Outcomes
We delivered insights informing product strategy and design solutions to improve the usability of purchasing an add-on subscription.
I facilitated a Preliminary analysis workshop with stakeholders to discuss their observations after viewing the sessions in person and remotely before writing a report and presenting prioritised findings and design recommendations.
Some key insights presented to the client were:
As a result of the decision to test the live journeys across different devices rather than prototypes, we were able to identify a critical error that stopped users from being able to purchase a subscription without a hard reboot and reinstalling the app on their device.
Copy on the subscription offers page on mobile confused a few participants because they didn’t understand what was included in the subscription and why some offers were more expensive than others that seemed to include less content.
The majority of participants were surprised that the current add-on features were not already included in the base subscription level.
Challenges & Learnings
Green-light credentials and payment methods before testing- The client and I created dummy credentials and payment methods for purchasing subscriptions during testing which were sometimes blocked by partner services due to suspicious activity. This created additional friction during onboarding which affected testing and was reported as a key consideration.
Live journeys come with updates- I raised the concern of live updates during a stakeholder workshop and I suggested that the client pause any updates to the specific journeys to avoid inconsistent findings. Unfortunately, during the 2 days of testing the journeys received multiple updates which affected key questioning and required flexibility and quick decision-making during moderation to deliver balanced and consistent insights.